{"id":6953,"date":"2019-12-15T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2019-12-15T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=6953"},"modified":"2021-02-04T12:37:24","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T12:37:24","slug":"meet-our-speakers-benni-aguado-ladino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/meet-our-speakers-benni-aguado-ladino\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Our Speakers: Benni Aguado (Ladino)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/RM2_kfhI0HK49lvmCB-Zvdd4qwAwblfpZ-rC78VomlYUI91g68b7E1kyPYbqTTBdaCX2mx4GRW2t80MQVWrKAQJ-G9Y7Wa_B9FViSq3aed8AFwzGOs956TGmATMmvNBiuXIODKEm\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<style>\n.videoWrapper {\n  position: relative;\n  padding-bottom: 56.25%; \/* 16:9 *\/\nheight: 0;\nmargin-bottom: 2%;\n}\n.videoWrapper iframe {\n  position: absolute;\n  top: 0;\n  left: 0;\n  width: 100%;\n  height: 100%;\n}\n<\/style>\n\n\n\n\n<p><em>F<a href=\"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/2019\/12\/11\/utalks-ladino-journey\/\">or every language uTalk adds to the app, we recruit two native speakers to come to our office in London and record<\/a>. In this post, learn more about Benni Aguado, a Ladino speaker who put his job as a Court Translator and Interpreter on hold to fly over and help us record the language.<\/em><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Benni Aguado, 57, grew up in New York and learnt Ladino from his mother and grandparents, who always spoke it in the family home. He didn\u2019t learn English until he started school, which caused a misunderstanding on his first day in class when he didn\u2019t respond to a teacher\u2019s instructions.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe teacher said to my mother, \u2018I\u2019m very sorry to inform you but your son is deaf,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cMy mother had to explain that it\u2019s not that I didn\u2019t hear her, but that we didn\u2019t speak English at home.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Benni, whose family can trace their Sephardic Jewish roots back to Turkey, is now trilingual, speaking Spanish as well as English and Ladino.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m very grateful to my family for teaching me Ladino because it was very easy for me to learn Spanish because of the great similarity [between the two],\u201d he said.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Benni has been using his Spanish skills to work as a Court Translator and Interpreter in New York for the past 23 years.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is passionate about supporting Ladino and has worked both with Ladino 21 and independently to record videos of the spoken language, such as this one:<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"videoWrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PIloVLB3WIE\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In his 20s, Benni also taught himself how to write Ladino using the Solitreo script, which, along with the Rashi script, predates the language\u2019s current written version, which uses the Latin alphabet. His interest in Solitreo was originally piqued when a family friend\u2014a Ladino speaker\u2014sent his family a postcard written in the script and he just couldn\u2019t understand it.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It has only been in the last 20-30 years that he has become aware of the declining number of people who could speak Ladino.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said, \u201cI remember, when I was 27 years old, I went to a museum and they had an exhibition called \u2018The Demise of a Culture.\u2019 I realised I was raised in a culture that was in peril and it was an odd, sad feeling.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m 57 now and although I\u2019m not a youngster anymore, I am one of the youngest Ladino speakers. Most people who are fluent in the language tend to be at least 70.\u201d<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For every language uTalk adds to the app, we recruit two native speakers to come to our office in London and record. In this post, learn more about Benni Aguado, a Ladino speaker who put his job as a Court Translator and Interpreter on hold to fly over and help us record the language. Benni &#8230; <a title=\"Meet Our Speakers: Benni Aguado (Ladino)\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/meet-our-speakers-benni-aguado-ladino\/\" aria-label=\"More on Meet Our Speakers: Benni Aguado (Ladino)\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1784],"tags":[1785,2,333,1789,793],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}